HYPER INFLATED PRICES BEGAT EMBITTERED MILITIA HUNTING US

Nigerians love life, it is unusual to recruit Nigerian as a suicide bomber. Family's purchasing power find causes in slums of recruits for Boko Haram, Niger Delta, OPC, MASSOB, or Arewa. Believe it or not, the same family purchasing power drives pen and armed robbers into politics. If super inflated price all over the Country is killing middleclass, you can imagine what it is doing to disenchanted grassroots. We either crush the oppressors or crash market hyper inflated prices. Solution will evade us as long as we tolerate takeover of our market by illegitimate excess cash since we think, looters create jobs. Yeah, they create jobs for militants to protect their political turf. The piece meal negotiation with one militant group will encourage others.

Militants take a vow of poverty or seek life of looters. They demand respect as armed robbers do. What we must realize is that if looters do not work hard for capital or borrows it from banks with interest; pen robbers can afford to hold on to high prices as long as they want and even hoard goods and services until we pay through our nose. They have nothing to lose. Buildings can go unrented, goods can rot, services not patronized and they can even sell cheaper to other countries. It happened in California, at the mercy of energy companies. Looted money used to hire militants holding us at ransom could be used as legal small business capital creating jobs.

If the middleclass are complaining that they cannot afford hyper inflated prices of goods and services in the most expensive country in the world, what about those stuck as the working and poor classes paying the same price at the market? As the number of middleclass members is dwindling, they have increased the number of working class with little purchasing power left in their arsenal. Even those working for hard currency can no longer cope with super inflated prices without commensurable clean income. Many traders and big business men and women are hidden faces or doubles for politicians buying at any price, drying up the market for the working class and the jobless. So poverty breeds militants faster than sound economics.

By the time they inflate contracts, inflate profit, inflate goods and services; potential militants or working class can only stare at prices Houses of Thieves encouraged. It has already been established that Nigerian politicians are the highest paid in the world. Though they and their cronies are less than ten percent of the population, by the time you count their contractors or partners, relatives and friend, they are still less than twenty percent. We are talking about less than 30 millions Nigerians at most in a population of 160 million pouring cash into the market to buy and bribe one another at super inflated amount. The Excess cash within a small clueless circle drives 80% or more than 130m into poverty and militancy, forget less than $2 US a day.

The politicians and business profiteers stealing us blind left, right and center and their cronies pump so much money into the market and buy at any price that they begat super inflation as can be expected. Now history, take the old unreliable 090 cell phones hyper inflated prices at the exclusive converted realm of the rich and powerful in Nigerians. Though, a short trip across the border to Benin Republic had revealed common people and market women using GSM. It is not surprising that it took so long to come to Nigeria. Even then, it took longer for the rich to accept those “cheap” phones. The money was there to monopolize 090 phones that the working class looked up with envy. Unfortunately for them, GSM 080 became a leveler.

What is mind bungling is how goods and services that are two or three times the price in Benin Republic, Ghana, India, China, Europe and America still sell like hot olele in Nigeria. It does not make a difference where the goods are made since those manufactured in Nigeria can be exported and re-imported for sale at a higher price like lace materials. Even those goods that are not rebranded, be it Ijebu, Okrika or Hausa made still sell at exorbitant prices after asking the Government to ban imports. All the common man or potential militant wants, is affordable price or be recruited. Jacking up the price of homemade goods to that of imported, do not help.

We are not talking about oil alone here, it could be cement, goat, cow, lap top, internet or TV cable services. Their prices are completely out of reach for the average Dele, Chinwe or Abdul. Whatever it is, market is guaranteed double or triple price in Nigeria. Please ask anyone the cost of building, not to talk of buying a house in any cosmopolitan city or buying materials to build in your village. We already have a world record of building one kilometer of road for one million US dollars. Forget about naira my friend. Nobody gives you quotes in naira anymore unless you can take it to Bureau de Change or mallam that may become militants without jobs.

Please, if you do not want to exchange blows with this potential militant, do not come with the cost of unreliable power, water and other infrastructure. They have beaten that horse to death. We do not have to condone those lightly either. But to blame power and water every time for double and triple the price in India with 1.2b people or Benin Republic with only 8.8m people is like turning us into Zimbabwe with 12.6m people soon. In Zimbabwe we know that battle between dictator for life and external forces play major role. Greed is the major reason in Nigeria gouging of price of goods and services. China hangs pen robbers, crushes militants but improves quality of life leveraging 1.3b people to sell goods cheaper at home and abroad.

The law of demand and supply is warped by Nigerians. Popular items made at home like cement are priced to those of imports while those of imports skyrocketed. One would expect that high demand at home will boost manufacturing industries providing jobs for youth and working class. No; saboteurs are ready to lay off workers to be recruited as armed robbers or militants. Thereby, decrease supply or hoard them turning into blocks until price climb higher again. This is the case for many products and our mentality to make excessive profit so that we can keep up with those vultures using cocoa bags to carry the loot home. If it is not mongering for profit, greed or fear of exposure, how could Presidential fiat bring cement price down?

The point is that a vicious circle has been created and that has eaten deep into our mentality. We resent armed and pen robbers and those making maximum profit regardless of the cost of manufacturing products. Others use bribe, endemic in all transaction from government to private sector if excessive profit is not available. In order to pay for higher prices of goods traders demand, send our children to private schools looters send theirs instead of providing good schools, travel out on vacations like looters rather than develop our own vacation or tourist attractions, seek medical help abroad instead of building good hospitals at home, drive cars we cannot manufacture at home and live it up ostentatiously. Militants are watching.